Art always used to involve spirit. Painters painted spirit. They painted by commission things to go into churches, and that was painting spirit. Or they would paint people of wealth, and they would try to show how they had power, and again, this is sort of spirit.

Once you step onto the fairy path, it's almost like there's no way off. You have to keep going.

It seems to me that art has lost its connection to spirit.

I always believed that the picture itself should tell the story.

Nobody wanted to publish a book about fairies; they said people wouldn't be interested. Luckily, I discovered Lady Cottington and her pressed fairies, which revived a huge amount of interest in fairies, so I could go ahead and do the book I wanted to do.

Fairies are becoming much more popular. I see fairyland as this big sea, and the tide is sometimes out.

For me drawing is an attempt to understand what I feel about the world I live in.